Wednesday saw the second public official in as many weeks to publicly confess to an affair that may end his political career. Given some of the resurrections we have seen, you can never say that someone is politically “dead”, but I believe the public tolerance for such behavior, particularly from people who have been so outspoken in their moral superiority, has worn very thin.

The state races in New Jersey and Virginia, which are held between congressional election years, have tended to be canaries in the coal mine of the national political mood. In 1993, Republicans won these two gubernatorial elections. George Allen replaced a Democrat in Virginia and I beat the incumbent Democrat in New Jersey. These victories were a prelude for Newt Gingrich and the signatories of the Contract with America to succeed in taking back the U.S. House of Representatives the following year. While the analogy to this year’s elections is not exact, both the Obama Administration and the RNC are taking a hard look at the possibility of Republican victories in this year’s gubernatorial races.